The Development of Geographical Thought

Human beings have asked questions about location, direction, distance, distribution, diffusion, scale, and place since the dawn of civilization. In ancient times, people began to express curiosity about the world around them. What are other places like? How do customs and societies differ? To what extent can these differences be explained by the geographic environment and other causal forces? What general principles about the relationships between human societies and their environments can be learned through observation of various peoples and places?

Systematic geographical thought has developed over thousands of years in response to these and similar questions. Throughout history, the discipline of geography has matured as answers to fundamental geographic questions have accumulated and as the intellectual approaches used to address such questions have become' increasingly sophisticated.

Induction, Deduction and Systematic Geographical Thought. Although many ancient civilizations engaged in systematic geographical thinking, the Greeks in particular were renowned for their efforts to develop concepts following systematic observation of the world around them. Aristotle observed that places to the south of Greece were warmer while those to the north were colder than Greece itself. He asked why observed surface temperatures increased with decreasing latitude. In order to answer this question.

Aristotle relied on the fact that the sun shines more directly overhead at lower latitudes, generating more heat. He reasoned that the tropical regions of the world were too hot for human habitation, while the polar regions were too cold. Human life must therefore be confined to the temperate zone in between. It followed that human beings could not cross the equator because of the intense heat of the tropics.

Aristotle's reasoning illustrates two fundamental intellectual processes: induction and deduction. Induction is the process of deriving general principles from particular facts or events. Deduction, on the other hand, is reasoning from the general to the specific—drawing conclusions about particular facts or events on the basis of general-process knowledge.

As we have seen. Aristotle had observed temperatures at different places and noted that higher temperatures occurred in the more southerly locations. On the basis of these observations, he used inductive reasoning to conclude that temperatures continue to increase as the equator is reached.

Today, of course, we know that Aristotle's conclusion is erroneous. In fact, surface temperatures at the equator are often lower than those in the Sahara Desert directly south of Greece. Aristotle reached the wrong conclusion for two reasons. First, he lacked information about climatic conditions in the equatorial regions and, second, he lacked knowledge of those factors responsible for differences in temperature across the earth's surface.

We now know that in addition to latitude, such factors as elevation, moisture, cloud cover, and wind and ocean circulation patterns influence the effect of distance from the equator on temperature.